Epical Epicness: Introducing the 2012 October Issue

When we were coming up with a list of adjectives to describe the beauty and grandeur of Northwest lodges, a word used in excess these days by my 10-year-old son (and further creatively mangled by him, as in the headline, above) kept coming to mind. It was undeniable: “Epic” is the only word that does the job.

Eight years ago, my family spent a few days at Kalaloch Lodge to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday. I was pregnant with my second son, and when my mom last visited there she had been pregnant with me, her second child, so it was a full-circle moment. We stayed in the bluff log cabins—where, within the knotty bulges of four log walls, you get to live out the childhood dream of staying inside a Lincoln Log cabin.

When you’re vacationing in the Northwest, it doesn’t get more epic than staying in a log cabin, and it feels even more so in one of our historic grand lodges, many of which are located within national parks. Check out Knute Berger’s story on Montana’s Glacier Park Lodge, where 40-foot old-growth Douglas fir pillars frame the lobby.

If you’re inclined to make log-cabin living more permanent, we’ve scouted out some log-cabin real estate for you. Or, if you’re into more quirky things, as I am, you’ll find a home away from home in the “Offbeat Retreats.” I cannot wait to hang in a sphere with my boys, though they will surely laugh their heads off at me as I try to catch my balance.

Managing editor Kristen Russell, who wrote this month’s cover story along with other writers, penned one of my favorite lines in this issue in the introduction to the lodges story: “In the leafy heart of autumn, we yearn for a weekend—or longer—spent at one of these glorious temples to serenity and adventure.” Indeed, spending time at these cabins and lodges, communing with old growth forests and giant craters, does have a tendency to put things in perspective.

Elsewhere, we’ve been closely following the same-sex marriage legislation debate, and by the time you get this magazine, messages for and against will be in full-throttle mud-slinging mode (I’m partial to the Freedom to Marry ad featuring former Washington state Republican Senator Cheryl Pflug, which started airing during the Olympics). Seattle is home to the second-largest population of gays and lesbians per capita in the country (after San Francisco) and this is an important issue for many in our city. As several of the couples we talked to for our story point out, it’s one that many are calling the biggest civil rights issue of our time. Epic indeed.